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SpongeBob SquarePants
1999 · TV series · 18 seasons
Created by Stephen Hillenburg
Deep down in the Pacific Ocean in the subterranean city of Bikini Bottom lives a square yellow sponge named SpongeBob SquarePants. SpongeBob lives in a pineapple with his pet snail, Gary, loves his job as a fry cook at the Krusty Krab, and has a knack for getting into all kinds of trouble without really trying. When he's not getting on the nerves of his cranky next door neighbor Squidward, SpongeBob can usually be found smack in the middle of all sorts of strange situations with his best buddy, the simple yet lovable starfish, Patrick, or his thrill-seeking surfer-girl squirrel pal, Sandy Cheeks.
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16 comments on Hacker News
"Alexa Play SpongeBob on youtube" is met with a sabrina carpenter hit every time. no idea why
Alternative it is hit with
"Would you like Spongebob, Spongebob Sponge on the Run, the spongebob squarepants movie, or Bob Espanja Pantalones Cuadrados
I am reminded of an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants where he meticulously plans a party with a huge list of scheduled, mandatory activities, and hovers around guests and tries to direct them on how to talk to each other and have fun. No one has fun until he leaves to perform errands and then gets locked out of his house. I wonder how much of that episode's plot was intended as a morality tale for children, and it's funny to consider that children's cartoon animators may have wide discretion to create stories meant to instruct kids on issues the animators have personally experienced. It's funny to imagine someone like Stephen Hillenburg or Derek Drymon or another writer going to a party that wasn't very fun and then saying "we need to let the future generation know that they shouldn't be too authoritarian about their parties", haha.
> There’s no doubt that Sinbad, Home on the Range and other projects did poorly in theaters during the ‘00s — or that CG films (even some that critics panned) did well. The numbers tell the tale.
If even the poorly reviewed CG films do well, of course the executives only funded that. People, unsurprisingly, prefer a guarantee of making money to a chance of making money.
Focusing on theatrical releases creates a bit of a false impression. There are clearly still cartoons in production, it's just that it's intended for TV or streaming. I suppose Spongebob Squarepants getting a 15th season isn't very romantic, but I'm sure the artists working on it appreciate the work.
In my pod we've got the theory that more people in the US like anime than domestic pop culture. All the time my son and I have random encounters with people who like Goblin Slayer or Solo Leveling or Bocchi The Rock but never find anybody who is interested in new movies and TV shows. They say Spongebob Squarepants has good ratings -- of course it has good ratings because it is on all the time. People mistake seeing ads for a movie for anyone being interested in the movie.
>I rarely "stumble" over great new content by accident, either because of a friend (or an algorithm) recommending it.
It's a bit funny because I feel that might be the difference between a child and an adult and how they consume content. or perhaps the difference between pre-internet and post internet.
Children do indeed stereotypically "watch anything you put in front of them". But they will still develop favorites and find things they dont like. For my millenial generation, Something like Spongebob wasn't just something that stuck because of the nostalgia of 10 year olds. The humor was simply very witty or very surreal, or just very funnny and managed to even scale to adult humor you'd miss until you re-watched it later (I'll spare you the entire video essay of "there will Never Ever be another cartoon like Spongebob Squarepants")
But all that shifted in adulthood. I'm anenthusiast who will keep tabs on media news, vibes of the people on social media and what they find, group to like-minded friends who give recommendaions, etc. The last time I simply "stumbled" into some unexpected piece of media was... well, kind of Puss and Boots 2. But that was simply because I liked the first film and then the sequel decided to deliver one of the best, tightly paced stories in over 15 years. Before that would have probably been Roblox way back in 2010, over a decade before it became this empire of gaming (and the talk of child exploitation and harassment).
>Streaming digital media changed that "hunt", for better or worse. The pain is still there. What changed is everyone thinking all good music must come not only gratis but also "effortless". Some app or magic gadget that will one day take the pain out of finding good content. If it only knows my taste well enough. It doesn't work like that.
indeed. I mostly agree and have some small reservations. All that old media was already vetted through multiple rounds of pitches and had some budget thrown at it for it to launch. The internet definitely changed that aspect to where I could technically pick up Audacity today and publish a song on Spotify next week. It truly is "effortless" in that sense if shipping is your goal.
But I think any craftman in any domain knows that there's a difference between shipping something and shipping a GOOD something. That's something many would never understand, as they never put that kind of effort into something. Or maybe understand in one industry but gets blinded by when they look at another.
Dall-E on the "animated sponge": The rights to the character depicted in the images, which is reminiscent of SpongeBob SquarePants, are owned by Nickelodeon, a subsidiary of ViacomCBS. The character is from the animated television series "SpongeBob SquarePants," created by Stephen Hillenburg.
Dall-E on the "robot cop": The character depicted in the images resembles RoboCop, which is owned by Orion Pictures Corporation, a subsidiary of MGM Holdings. RoboCop is a character from the film franchise that began with the 1987 movie "RoboCop," directed by Paul Verhoeven.
Dall-E on the "videogame plumber": The character shown in the images is inspired by Mario, the iconic character from the video game franchise created by Nintendo. The rights to Mario and related intellectual property are owned by Nintendo Co., Ltd.
All of these are in the first go. No retries or rephrasings of the question.
Anything can (and will) be used as an excuse or justification for things like genocide or sexual repression.
Like, I am not trying to defend religion because it holds some special place in my heart, because it doesn’t, i am entirely non-religious. But looking at how Soviet Union did all those terrible things and more, while explicitly cracking down on religion and essentially prohibiting most of it (with a bunch of gulaging and murders, just to speed up the process a bit), I don’t think religion on itself is the problem.
> people still claim religious moral guidelines are somehow useful or good.
I mean, if one cites religion as their source of inspiration and encouragement for doing good things and being kind to other people, who am I to interfere? Sure, we can muse on the fact that good morals and kindness shouldn’t come from a belief in some deity or holy books. Ultimately, as long as someone is doing good things, I don’t really care whether they draw their inspiration to so from a religion or some charitable person in real life or an episode of spongebob squarepants. Whatever is helping them cope with the reality of living in a way that makes lives of those around them better.
This article seems to be written by a religious zealot, and the fact that the article opens mentioning his concern of whether or not his friends at church nod in approval or not about what he does is very telling.
I have 2 young kids, and I select what they can watch. And I'm aware that when I was a kid I watched lots of violent shows like Tom and Jerry like someone else said, or even Dragon Ball which is a million times more violent, but I hesitate to let them watch other much more innocuous shows.
I'm an atheist, so I'm not burdened with religious prejudices, and I'm very open minded, I think everyone has a right to sleep with and love whoever they want, and to identify themselves as whoever they want, I also think no one should be discriminated against because of their skin tone, nationality, beliefs, identity, disabilities or anything else.
But I also understand the outrage against wokism. There is an episode in Ridley Jones which is a show for young kids, where there is a bison saying that it's non-binary and what are their preferred pronouns. This is completely unnecessary for the plot and those are subjects that go miles above the heads of the intended audience. Also in many of the latest Disney productions and other shows in Netflix there's been a lot of queer characters and gay/lesbian relationships, which is not necessarily a problem depending how it is treated, specially if the production is for teenagers and adults, but I think it's completely unnecessary and kind of force feeding to include that kind of topics in the shows for the youngest kids. That trend also brings us ludicrous contradictions like an upcoming version of Snow White and the 7 dwarves, which are not actually dwarves, I think there's maybe 1 dwarf only.
Having said that, there's so many examples of religious extremisms taking things to the, erm, well, extremes. And I'm not going to even mention Muslim Theocracies because I think those are ultimate level of autocratic religion fuelled fascist regimes. But for example in Catholic Poland, the children's show Teletubbies was banned because they said the purple teletubbie was gay.
I think there are lots of shows in Netflix that it would be wise to don't allow your kids to watch, depending on their age of course. But the concerns the article raises about Paw Patrol are honestly laughable. There's a lot of illogical things in kid's shows. Just look Spongebob Squarepants and you'll see that they're under the water but most of the time physics and everything else behaves as if they're not. In Paw Patrol I always asked myself how a 10 year old doesn't seem to have adult supervision and seems to have unlimited resources and money to fund his organization. But again, in this show puppies talk and can drive cars, so you can't expect it to be based on reality. Of course in this show there will always be some kind of trouble which the Paw Patrol will happily solve, but there wouldn't be much of a show if that wasn't the case, isn't it? I can think of many series I watched when I was a kid and teenager, that also show a different problem or villain in every episode, actually that's the case for a large number of series. Just think of those oldies Knight Rider, McGuiver, A Team... The same critiques applied to Paw Patrol in the article would applie to all of them.
Also it calls the Mayor in Paw Patrol tyrannical when there's no evidence of repression or autocracy in the show, and I find it funny that he fantasizes with a resistance composed of poets and religious types. As if religious types weren't on the oppressing end of autocracies most of the time along history.
Or the SpongeBob SquarePants "Panty Raid" episode.
This is the premise for a pretty funny Spongebob Squarepants episode (The Great Snail Race).
One of my favorite “I wonder how many people got that?” jokes in Spongebob Squarepants is a reference to this: https://youtu.be/RUM-Qk4_KG4
“Every eleven minutes” because each “half hour” episode is two separate segments totaling 22 minutes.
Haha, saying "I can't stand Spongebob" makes me think of someone trying to critically review episodes of Spongebob Squarepants for its literary merit.
It also makes sense if you watch SpongeBob SquarePants.
There's quite a lot happening in Bikini Bottom. For example you can see a "pretty pineapple" down there. And I haven't watched enough episodes to be sure, but doubtlessly someone has fallen down a well.
There's a SpongeBob SquarePants episode that covers this. "Sailor Mouth". Highly recommended. The swear words are bleeped out with dolphin chirping and other maritime sound effects.
Patrick: Hmm... [dolphin chirp]! Oh, hey! I think I know what that means. That's one of those sentence enhancers.
SpongeBob: Sentence enhancers?
Patrick: You use them when you want to talk fancy. You just sprinkle it over anything you say, and Wham-o! You've got yourself a spicy sentence sandwich!
http://spongebob.wikia.com/wiki/Sailor_Mouth_(transcript)
If kids really don't have any spending power, we wouldn't have Fruit Loops, Spongebob Squarepants, Barbie, Disney movies, or Harry Potter.
Children drive an enormous amount of consumer spending. Their usage patterns matter.
If anything, extracting money from an adult may be easier indirectly by their children than directly.
Go thru the grocery store, or a souvenir shop, or even watch ads on TV. Look real hard at what's selling: much of it is paltry rehashes of old ideas (or outright crud) executed with little more than sheer will.
I watch little TV or other ad-driven media. I was amazed, after a long absence, by a movie-preceding ad for macaroni and cheese. 90 seconds of big-screen viewing time, produced at a cost of millions of dollars for...cheap pasta and powdered cheese food? That's not ideas, that's not execution per se, that's sheer force of will. Ditto for cheap trinkets sold anywhere. Ditto for frigging Spongebob Squarepants. That's hiring an accountant and an ad director and filling in the blanks they give you.
As I wrote in the prior thread: pick something and do it. It's not about brilliant ideas or clever execution, it's being relentless.